A temporary detention involves a police officer holding and questioning an individual for a short amount of time. The police only need reasonable suspicion for a temporary detention. Detentions may be accompanied by some form of search or frisk, though not all detentions involve a search. Detentions can be dispatched in response to a call or initiated by an officer.
This analysis is based on records of temporary detentions made by the City of Charlottesville Police. The data was received in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by Jeff Fogel made over multiple time periods. We have aggregated the data to two primary time periods:
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Segmenting by time period, we see a few trends
This is where I think we could tie in some narrative that you are collecting, Jordy, to analyze some specific spaces that may have more fraught histories. I gave an example with the Mall.
The Downtown Mall is a public space for free use by Charlottesville residents.
What these analyses cannot account for is frequency of utilization of the space. Not many individuals live in this area, although 83% of those who do are white. Speaking with Charlottesville residents of color….
Police officers record a reason for detaining an individual. We recoded these reasons into the following categories: (1) Narcotics related, (2) Suspicious circumstances, (3) Disorderly conduct (including drunkeness), (4) Crimes on persons (e.g., assult, robbery, weapons), (5) Crimes on property (e.g., burglary, vandalism, trespassing), (6) Traffic-related (e.g., traffic stops, violations, accidents), and (7) everything else (e.g., assistance, unidentified). While several of the reasons represent categories of crimes, the recorded reason reflects the reasonable suspicion of an officer at the time of the stop, not a conclusion that the given crime has been committed. We do not have a record for whether the stop led to an arrest for all of the data provided.